Beth's Bookshelf

The first time I ever saw Mona Awad’s “Bunny,” it was on BookTok. Someone had curated a list of novels that they recommended as great thrillers and wonderfully upsetting reads. The cover alone stood out amongst the rest; when had I ever seen a thriller with a brilliantly pink cover before? A quick search for the novel online took me to find that Margaret Atwood – THE MARGARET ATWOOD – had claimed this book was “sooo genius” and I was sold.

“Bunny” takes a deep dive into the world of academia and nose-to-the-sky rich folks, exploring the complexities belonging. We follow our narrator, Samantha Heather Mackey, through her final year in her MFA program at Warren University and Mona Awad holds no punches in her outing of the sinister aspects of elitist academics. Samantha appears to be the only normal person in her cohort. The other four girls are outrageously wealthy, excessively sweet, and unbearably sentimental. They are often seen on campus clutching each other in tight embraces (always a group hug, mind you) or in class, sitting as a group, and echoing each other’s commentary. There is always an “I love you, Bunny” to be heard amongst them. Samantha refers to them as The Bunnies, as they do all call each other “Bunny” more often than their given names.

Despite how much she’d like to be disgusted by them, Samantha finds herself intrigued, much to the chagrin of her one and only friend, Ava. After receiving an invitation to the Bunnies’ “Smut Salon,” a gathering that only Bunnies attend, Samantha finds herself more and more drawn in. Without giving too much away, her grasp on what is real and what is fiction loosens as she spends more and more time with the other women in her cohort, both in Workshop and off campus.

There was not a single moment of this book that I was prepared for. I found myself frequently pausing to set it down and just stare straight ahead, wondering what could possibly explain the events I just read. Mona Awad creates a narrative that is captivating and drops you so deep into the narrator’s psyche that you are compelled to turn page after page until the whole book is done and you are alone with your thoughts. It was tragic and beautiful and horrific and I must gobble up whatever other books she has written to fill the void that has been created in my life.